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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24285727">always the same path (but never the same journey)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mister_Fox/pseuds/Mister_Fox'>Mister_Fox</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bleach, Journey (Video Game 2012)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M, Post-Canon, Reincarnation, Temporary Amnesia, Temporary Character Death, Universe Alteration</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:22:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,380</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24285727</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mister_Fox/pseuds/Mister_Fox</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a him. There is a mountain. There is a desert between them.<br/>There is a journey.<br/>There is always the journey.</p><p> </p><p>UraIchi Week 2020 - Day 1, Reincarnation.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke, Urahara Kisuke/Kurotsuchi Mayuri/Kurosaki Ichigo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>UraIchi Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>always the same path (but never the same journey)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dawn.</p><p>He blinks at the bright of the rising sun, illuminating the sand dunes around him. The sand glitters as it swirls in the air, carried around by eddies of gentle wind.</p><p>How did he come to be here?</p><p>The dunes around him are featureless, save for the looming mountain in the distance, the peak split in the middle, light spilling from the crack.</p><p>There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else for him to go <em>— </em>certainly, he wouldn’t find life in the empty sands, would he? Even if he isn’t sure why he needs to find life.</p><p>Or whether he needs to find anything at all.</p><p>Two strange markers stand on a dune, faded red banners streaming in the wind.</p><p>He goes over to examine them <em>— </em>but there’s nothing there.</p><p>He walks in the direction of the mountain until he finds shattered white stone, remnants of some structure now swallowed by the sands.</p><p>A strange, shimmering glyph hangs in the air above it <em>— </em>and around it, a school of… shreds of red cloth swim in the air, like… fish. Or maybe… birds?</p><p>They do not attack as he approaches and walks to the glyph.</p><p>It sparks, and takes flight, circling him until it flies straight at him, sinking into his red cloak.</p><p>The same red as the little <em>creatures</em> swirling around him, for surely they are too alive to be mere fabric.</p><p>There’s something around his neck now <em>— </em>a scarf with white glyphs on it, the end trailing behind him. He feels... lighter now, like he could just lift off with a push and rise into the sky, just like the little scraps.</p><p>He moves to jump over the edge of the rock, back down to the sand dune<em>.</em> But instead of falling, he soars. Not far, not for long, but he <em>flies</em>.</p><p>He touches down on the sand, the scarf now a blank red, no sign of white symbols on it.</p><p>How curious.</p><p>There are markers around the place<em>. </em>Tall, thin, dark grey slabs of stone once covered in the same sort of glyphs, if carved, inanimate ones, and not glowing, floating ones.</p><p>What are they?</p><p>He finds more of the creatures, and as they swirl around him, he feels <em>light</em> again.</p><p>Are they sharing their energy with him? That is most kind of them.</p><p>He opens his mouth to speak, even if he isn’t quite sure how and a chirping note issues out <em>— </em>a shard of melody.</p><p>The creatures around him chirp in response, and fly faster, so fast that he’s lifting off the sand as he stands in the middle of them.</p><p>They sound… happy.</p><p>And he is happy that they are happy, he decides.</p>
<hr/><p>He finds another ruin <em>— </em>but more, this time, walls and a roof.</p><p>He chirps curiously at it, and a part of the wall with dead torches around it glimmers, until a picture shines from it.</p><p>The markers scattered around the place are shown on it <em>— </em>and underneath them, stylised… figures?</p><p>The figures look like… people wearing the same robes as him, but grey, rather than red.</p><p>This all is a graveyard then. A silent, abandoned graveyard, and he does not know how he got there.</p><p>He shivers.</p><p>Time to go elsewhere, perhaps.</p>
<hr/><p>There is a valley in the dune, exposing the side of a massive white structure barely visible above the dune line. Tall, gated entranceways are arranged in a semi-circle around the further half of it, all facing a tall, age-worn cracked platform in the middle of the valley.</p><p>He slides down the sand, to where he sees strange cage-like constructions, cloth creatures <em>trapped</em> inside, flying in circles.</p><p>Chirping in vague unhappiness, he walks around the small mesh enclosures <em>— </em>but they’re set into short stone pillars, and he can’t pry away any part of the grates. He can’t help them.</p><p>There’s a free flock nearby which tries to play with him. He walks around the cleared area, finding two more glyphs, his scarf growing longer with them, but there is nothing that can help him free the little creatures.</p><p>He stares into the gloom of the tall entranceways, past the bars, but can not make out what is behind them or where they lead to.</p><p>The only things left to explore are the long, faded red banners, stuck to the top of the crumbled tower in the middle of the sunken area.</p><p>With difficulty, he flies to the top to investigate, hopping from one broken shard on its side to another.</p><p>The cloth glows at his touch, growing as vibrant as his cloak and the creatures, and he chirps in surprise.</p><p>The melody has more of an effect than the touch<em>. </em>The banners light up, and crumble.</p><p>He jumps back as the grate under his feet parts, and a large swarm of creatures — a far, far larger swarm than the earlier ones — escapes the shattered tower.</p><p>They swirl around him in joy, and he rises high into the air <em>— </em>high enough that he can fly to the last, unexplored gate that was too far off the ground to reach by flight before.</p><p>There are more markers there, in rows around a large circular space.</p><p>A statue of a stylised cloaked person stands at the end.</p><p>The markers glow when he approaches, and he chirps, lighting up more and more until they all glow <em>— </em>and then a circle in front of the statue glows too.</p><p>He wonders what it does. He’d like to find out, he thinks.</p><p>He walks over, and sits down.</p><p>The world fades away.</p><p>He walks ahead through the empty space, curious, until he sees something emerging from the mist. A tall figure, perhaps three times as tall as him, maybe, in a pure white cloak.</p><p>They nod at him, and step aside, revealing a vision of the mountain, the peak shining with a bright light.</p><p>The light of it reaches the very stars, disperses among them, and then falls to the ground like rain. Where it touches down, plants start to grow, and birds rise into the sky crying out in song.</p><p>The world turns green, streams start to run through the forests.</p><p>People emerge, starting to build small villages and towns.</p><p>They are not dressed in robes, and they do not sing <em>— </em>merely speak.</p><p>And around them, the strange, cloth creatures start to appear, flocks that grow and circle and play.</p><p>The vision fades away.</p><p>He is sitting on the stone floor of the strange white structure, although he does not recall sitting down.</p><p>There were people around here, around the mountain, once.</p><p>Different people.</p><p>What happened to them?</p><p>The grate ahead of him slides up, revealing a long passage deep into the building.</p><p>Well, there is little else for him to do other than explore.</p><p>The corridor is long and straight, and he walks it to the end, where it… leads to a platform, set at the top of a tall cliff face, facing a tall, broken bridge, leading to another platform in a clif-face, framed by waterfalls of sand.</p><p>There is nowhere else to go but down, now.</p><p>He’s not sure how he’ll get across, but… Well. He can see plenty of trapped trailing cloth. Perhaps, perhaps… if he frees enough, the being will gather together to help him in return?</p><p>Or he may find enough sigils to make his scarf longer that he may fly to the very top of the bridge?</p>
<hr/><p>They form a bridge of cloth for him, he discovers, one that dissolves as soon as he reaches the next robed statue. But he is grateful that they helped at all, and he can not expect them to stay there all day, of course.</p><p>He sings in gratitude, and they reply, a strange, broken melody.</p><p>He sits in front of the statue, and sings until the vision comes again.</p><p>The people play with the cloth creatures. They build tall structures, a city of white on the mountain, and a larger, sprawling city grows outward from it in concentric circles. The creatures work with them, and they create large structures, with strange mechanisms powered by creatures flying in and out of them.</p><p>The people live, and then they.. die, except for the faded remnants of them that remain in the city, and continue to live.</p><p>But some become monsters, and the world starts to break down.</p><p>Is that what happened? Did the people simply die out? He is not certain.</p><p>Through the next corridor he goes, until he comes out in a desert again. The sand here is soft and pink and glittery, the air lighter, clearer. There is a gentle mist in the distance, soft clouds that rise into a strangely tinted green sky.</p><p>There’s a chirp behind him, and he turns around.</p><p>There’s a person running to catch up with him, running faster than he thinks he can. She <em>— </em>she feels like a she, anyway, her long dark purple hair spilling out of the hood, face hidden behind the same kind of black mask as his own <em>— </em>circles him curiously, and he chirps back.</p><p>It might be nice to make this journey with company, he thinks. They find strange, dolphin-like creatures in these sands that they free from trapped metal rubble. They guide them around, to where a shooting star leaves a glyph in the sands, to where more creatures are waiting to be freed, and then they lead them to a tower at the other end of the dunes, the base of it swallowed by a sandstorm.</p><p>When he and his companion settle down to watch the vision <em>— </em>they are together in the white of it, watching what happens.</p><p>A group of people in robes traps the creatures with a large, strange metal beast, and uses them to power a device that splits the world in four. Two worlds of greenery and life, a world of sand and night, and a world of sand and red. The creatures are shy, now, as they are hunted in the world where the robed ones live for power, to build castles high in the sky, where the device remains to keep the worlds apart.</p><p>With all the creatures captured, the metal beasts lie to rest.</p><p>The cloth dolphin-creatures take him and his companion away from the tower, dropping them on sandy slopes too steep to stand on. The sun turns the sand a shimmering, molten gold as they surf down the slopes, singing backwards and forwards as they race forwards in the warm sunlight.</p><p>There’s glyphs they miss, but he can’t bring himself to care, overjoyed by the company.</p><p>And then they fall into a deep pit, a place where buildings have collapsed under the weight of the sand, until he is trapped in the blue-lit city below.</p><p>They try to float to the other ends of the gap, but <em>— </em>it’s too far. Too far.</p><p>There is another statue, here, another vision.</p><p>The robed ones fight and war for territory and the flying creatures, until the creatures are all gone, trapped and taken, and the beasts all sleep entirely.</p><p>Order is brought by thirteen white-cloaked figures.</p><p>The land is peaceful, now, although much misery is in the concentric circles of the vast city now, without the creatures to power their devices.</p>
<hr/><p>The city beneath the sands is… eerie. There are seaweed-like constructions of cloth, and medusa-like floating animals, small swarms of what he thinks of as the not-fish now swarming among them.</p><p>But they get fewer as they get deeper, until there are none.</p><p>And strange, metallic noises sound from beyond the walls.</p><p>He walks close to his companion, and she does not seem to mind. They chirp quietly here, and hope nothing awakens.</p>
<hr/><p>A metal beast springs from the sands, devouring a flock of not-fish, and barely misses seeing them, the searchlight missing them only through luck.</p><p>They run through the dark corridors, and see more of the beasts. They had not died long ago, then, merely slumbered until… until the city fell, and the cloth creatures were free again?</p><p>The two of them skid down a slope, pursued by three, shrieking beasts, until they slide into a strange… He’s not sure how to describe it. Among the sands, it is a platform engraved with glyphs that shine, the light a thick, visible stream that reaches the ceiling, and the beasts crash against it, are repelled by it.</p><p>He’s shaking, and his companion sings in reassurance at him.</p><p>There’s a statue here. Are these things <em>everywhere</em>?</p><p>Perhaps the vision will explain more.</p><p>They watch what happens in the white. Time passes. A long time. There are always thirteen robed figures, but who they are changes.</p><p>And then different white robed figures come.</p><p>A battle is fought, and the invaders reach the strange, floating castles built long ago. They break the old device. All the cloth-creatures are freed. The worlds collide, and the worlds that once lived get buried in the sand. The castles fall around the mountain, breaking through the sand and layers of cities, until the sleeping beasts awake<em>. </em>But without direction, they do nothing but devour what they were taught to.</p><p>The world is once again whole, but little lives in it.</p><p>There’s a small passageway that leads from the safe, glowing zone elsewhere.</p><p>It’s the only place to go, now<em>. </em>The beasts are still watching them from beyond the protective light.</p><p>He exchanges a look with his companion.</p><p>She shrugs.</p><p>They walk.</p>
<hr/><p>They reach a massive room, dominated by a massive pillar in the middle. The ceiling is so high it disappears from sight in the gloom. There’s nothing around them, but one of the walls looks reminiscent of something, framed by markers.</p><p>He approaches it, and chirps.</p><p>The wall lights up, and changes, to form images.</p><p>Him, waking in the desert.</p><p>There’s a strange rush of air, and light floods into the room, like water.</p><p>It’s breathable, but he can fly to the surface and jump out of it, like a fish. Maybe, lighting more of the story-walls would bring the light to the very top of the room, or another way out?</p><p>One by one, they light the walls, reaching them through flight, or by hopping onto one of the cloth creatures emerging from somewhere in the depths, the walls telling the story of the journey. Their journey.</p><p>A massive creature starts circling the pills, and while the light doesn’t yet reach the top of it… they ride it high enough to be able to jump to the highest story-wall, and watch the light rise to them and past them.</p><p>There is another statue at the top of the pillar, of course.</p><p>They go to it.</p><p>This vision does not tell a story, and the tall one seems… even taller than before. Instead of the distant past, they are shown their journey, together.</p><p>And new images, of them standing in the snow, staring at the mountain top, after exiting this room.</p><p>He shivers. Until now, they have been in warm places, but that mountain… he hopes their clothes will be enough.</p>
<hr/><p>The snow is cold, and it clings to him, frosts his cloak and drains the lightness from him, until it’s so very hard to fly. His companion is right next to him, and the closeness keeps the cold away, makes it so that they’re still not entirely ground-bound, but it is <em>cold</em> in the snow, and the metal beasts roar above and around them.</p><p>They struggle against the wind and over a frosted over cloth bridge that barely sings to them, hint of flocks of not-fish frozen in the ice.</p><p>There’s a graveyard, almost, of broken beasts in the snow, and they hide in those corpses as they are hunted from above, and they go higher and higher and <em>higher.</em></p><p>Eventually, there’s no metal beasts. Just silence and a thickly falling snow.</p><p>Their scarves are gone, falling apart from the frost, and that feels bad, but he is… so tired now.</p><p>The storm has stopped, the falling snow soft and gentle now.</p><p>So very tired. He can’t even chirp to his companion, or she to him.</p><p>Far ahead, he can still see the light of the mountain, even through the snow.</p><p>If he… lies down in the snow for a while, maybe to get a little more energy…</p><p>As he falls forwards, he knows he won’t be getting up again.</p><p>There’s a faint, soft sound of his friend falling next to him.</p><p>He closes his eyes.</p>
<hr/><p>There is light, and then there are shadows, dimming it.</p><p>He feels<em>- </em> light, and then he is lifted, standing, and for a moment, he sees the outlines of several tall ones, before his scarf glows, and he’s being pulled up and up and <em>up</em>, through clouds and raging beasts, his friend just ahead of him, until they’re higher than the clouds, until they’re close to the mountain top.</p><p>The air here is light and thin but it’s not difficult to breathe, and he trills, as he flies through the cliffs and peaks and waterfalls full of the cloth creatures, laughing as he goes higher and higher through thin clouds, and the sky is full of music.</p><p>There are gates, tall and beautiful, and other hints of old buildings, as they get ever close to the split peak of the mountain, until they’re standing at the very edge of the gap, where glyphs and light suffuse the air.</p><p>He glances at his companion, and together, they walk into the light.</p>
<hr/><p>He wakes up in the yellow desert, lit softly by a morning sun.</p><p>He spends a long time trying to walk away through the desert, curious if there is any other way to go, but it doesn’t seem like the mountain gets any more distant, and his footprints are always swept away in minutes by the gentle breeze.</p><p>There is nothing to walk to but the mountain.</p><p>Perhaps, that is all that is left of the world.</p>
<hr/><p>He knows the way, this time, but he does not hurry. The journey is what matters here, he is sure, not the destination.</p><p>Perhaps he should seek out more of the story-walls. Perhaps there is more to find.</p>
<hr/><p>There are many story-walls to find, but they<em>—</em> some of them are hard to place in the general story.</p><p>He does not know what the stolen orb means, or the split between the white robes, or many other things.</p><p>But there is a figure with a sword and orange hair and it feels familiar, important. More familiar than some of the white robes, although he is not sure how he knows which of them are familiar or not.</p>
<hr/><p>He passes through the sunken city quickly, running past the metal beasts. He does not… want to know what will happen if he is caught.</p><p>They awaken this time, too. Some of them are already awake, disturbed by other passing travelers, perhaps disturbed by his own journey here an unknown time ago — but he avoids them, hiding behind pillars and in the broken remnants.</p><p>It is… lonely, he decides.</p><p>To be down here, without company, where it feels like no one else at all is alive.</p><p>It would be <em>terrible</em> to be eaten here in entirety by the creatures, too, and so he does not linger or dwell on his thoughts.</p>
<hr/><p>Golden light is already suffusing most of the final chamber and he chirps out as he rises, but there is no responding call. Has the traveler here already moved on?</p><p>Most of the walls are lit, that’s for certain — telling the stories of a traveler’s journey from the place of waking, to here. And the story of the people that came before — or maybe, the story of the travelers when they were still the <em>other</em> <em>people</em>.</p><p>But no. The traveler has not yet departed this place.</p><p>He seems a glimmer of a red cloak high above, standing at one of the story-walls.</p><p>This traveler is silent, and does not chirp back, not even when he keeps chirping and chirping at them. He can see long strands of blue hair escape the hood when he gets close — but nothing more, as they turn away from him.</p><p>They finish flooding the room with the golden light together, and the stranger hurries off, finishing their conversation with the Elder before he does.</p><p>Why don’t they want to talk to him? Who are they?</p><p>He hopes they meet again, if merely to satisfy his own curiosity.</p>
<hr/><p>The snow swallows him again, and… he knows he <em>must</em> be dying, now that he knows to pay attention to it. Truly dying, like he did the last time, his body failing in the icy storm, limbs losing warmth and feeling, until he falls next to a grave marker that will now mark more than one grave.</p><p>He is… sad.</p><p>Will he be brought back, again?</p><p>Another chance?</p><p>He doesn’t know, he’s not <em>certain</em>.</p>
<hr/><p>He soars into the sky and to the top of the mountain.</p><p>The creatures there are happy to see him, and he, them. The journey was not in vain, even if he can not linger.</p>
<hr/><p>He meets a fellow red-cloaked traveller — one of many that he has met, but this one feels different. He wears a mask like the rest of them to shield his face from the sand- but whose hood is off, exposing a mane of ginger hair.</p><p>Like the one from the carving.</p><p>He feels familiar, and they travel together from the end to the beginning, singing, always singing.</p><p>Perhaps they’ll meet again, when he can say more than just <em>‘Hello’. </em>When he can ask, instead of just watch as his companion stares inscrutably at a wall of images, at what may or may not be him long, long ago.</p>
<hr/><p>He meets his first companion, the One That Runs Quickly, again. They take their time with the journey, going further, going side-ways, exploring.</p><p>She has had many journeys before she met him, she explains as best she can, drawing in the sand. But he is the first she met.</p><p>He wonders what determines when they meet each other.</p><p>He hopes they meet again.</p>
<hr/><p>When he reaches the pink desert for maybe the seventh, in the distance, he sees a white robed figure.</p><p>A tall one?</p><p>As he approaches, he finds that the white-robed figure is not a tall one from his vision. Merely something like himself, but… different. Stronger. The stranger <em>sings</em>, voice low and pleasant, the melody a continuous sound rather than his own broken chirps.</p><p><em>I’m Shinji</em>, the other one says, in things that aren’t words and yet he understands them. He chirps in acquiescence. <em>What is your name?</em></p><p>He doesn’t know what his name is, but he doesn’t know how to say that.</p><p><em>You must be pretty new</em>. <em>Eh, I guess ye can stick around with me for now. You’ll remember your name. Eventually.</em></p><p>He follows Shinji over the pink sand dunes, singing to the trapped cloth creatures to release them.</p><p>Shinji doesn’t head straight for the mountain — he follows the creatures around the dunes, until all of them are released, and they find two glyphs that he hadn’t yet found in his journeys through the desert. His own scarf trails over the sand. Shinji’s grows less — or perhaps it just looks that way, because it is so, so much longer than his own.</p><p>It is… confusing thinking about Shinji, when he doesn’t have his own name. But it doesn’t feel right to just choose one, either.</p><p>When they get closer to the mountain, there’s another shooting star, one of the many that pass overhead. This one falls in the dunes, rather than race over their heads. They find a glyph where it has fallen, on top of a ruined wall.</p><p>They go onwards, to a strange sandstorm that consumes tall towers.</p><p>He follows Shinji to the top of the tallest tower, but hesitates when Shinji sits to talk with the tall one, following<em>—</em> too late, apparently, because he doesn’t get included in the conversation, his vision seen by him only.</p><p>When he wakes, Shinji is gone.</p><p>Glyphs are scratched into the sand, ones he can <em>read</em>.</p><p>
  <em>See ya around, kiddo.</em>
</p><p>Perhaps they’ll meet later?</p>
<hr/><p>The journey is never quite the same twice — never the same creatures in the same places, never the same travelers.</p><p>He sees Shinji in the distance, once, and the blue-haired one he runs with twice, with the stranger a little… softer the second time. But the blue-haired one always runs quickly, like he wants it to be over with fast.</p><p>He thinks the blue-haired one finds the last part of the path… <em>distressing</em>. But there is little they can change about the way the journey must end. They walk slowly through the snow, and he half-hides the blue-haired one in his own cloak, and when they reach the storm, they fall asleep together. He hopes what little warmth he can provide is at least a little comfort to his companion.</p><p>The other travelers do not avoid him but they are slower and more hesitant and none of them follow him through the whole journey.</p><p>That is fine. He can explore just fine on his own.</p><p>He learns to talk.</p>
<hr/><p>The traveler from the tale meets him again and again, and it is a joy to fly with him through the desert, to journey to the mountain again and again.</p><p>It is strangely exhilarating and exciting and it leaves him feeling an emotion he can not name, merely sing it out into the world.</p><p>Love, something whispers in the back of his mind, but he does not recognise the word, the meaning of it here.</p><p>It’s almost tempting to remove his mask and ask his fellow to do the same, but he refrains. What if this strange thing he feels is not reciprocated?</p><p>It is easier to sing and laugh and fly together, twisting around each other in the air, sharing strength and flying ever higher.</p>
<hr/><p>He meets the One Who Runs Fast many times more. This time it is in the dark seaweed forests, but it is different now. Not even the new white cloak she wears can stop him from recognising her.</p><p>Her voice is the same as before when she calls out, and he chirps happily in greeting.</p><p><em>‘Hello, hello, friend,’</em> he tells her, and she chirps back.</p><p>
  <em>‘Hello, hello.’</em>
</p><p>They run side by side, chirping quietly.</p><p><em>‘It has been some time,’</em> he says. <em>I have met others.’ </em>It takes effort to talk. He’s not sure if he should be able to, before his cloak turns white. But he has learned.</p><p><em>‘So have I. My name— I have it. Yoruichi.’ </em>Her voice in his head... his understanding of her song is loud and clear now, like it is with all the white-robed travelers.</p><p>It sounds familiar. Correct. Like it had always been hers, and he had always known it.</p><p>But that’s not possible<em>, </em>is it?</p><p>
  <em>‘Do you have yours yet?’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘No. But there is no hurry.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘No, no. No hurry. But come! I must show you.’</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>They do not follow the usual paths, or even the usual unusual routes of exploration before the yearning for the mountain drags the on course — instead, she leads him through cracks, on and on through the sunken place, into darkness only lit by the flowing glyphs on their cloaks and scarves.</p><p><em>‘Where are we going?’</em> he asks, but she merely laughs and sings.</p><p>She brings him to a large chamber<em>, </em>one that he recognises from a vision.</p><p>The Soul King’s throne room, although he does not know what the Soul King is.</p><p>But Yoruichi carries on through it, like it’s not what she meant to show him, like it’s not the immensely interesting and fascinating place that it is, and he regretfully follows her.</p><p>Now that he knows to look for it<em>, </em>he can always come back later.</p>
<hr/><p>They come to a massive sunken courtyard, eventually — walls damaged here even more, as though in some great fight.</p><p>There are cracks in the ceiling, letting in traces of pale moonlight — moonlight that reflects off a- a sword, he thinks it’s called, sticking out of the sand, half-buried. Words come and fade, he’s noticed. Like forgotten memories, like fish in a pond, surfacing and then diving, but never really coming out.</p><p>Yoruichi runs ahead, and circles it.</p><p>
  <em>‘Come on, K— Come on!’</em>
</p><p>He approaches slowly. The sword feels… familiar.</p><p>He reaches out to take it.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>The sky is black above them, everything falling down.</em>
</p><p><em>He is fighting someone</em> — <em>not just someone, a Quincy, whose power is poison, and Yoruichi is fighting by his side, shedding yellow lightning as she pounces again and again.</em></p><p><em>Red stitches its way through reality to join the yellow, and is followed by the green-blue claws of an Arrancar, and then the purple lance of another, and </em>together<em>, they all bring down the enemy.</em></p><p><em>But there is no use</em> — <em>the Soul King is dead; and, beyond</em> — <em>they feel it, as the champion and the conqueror fall to each other. Ichigo is gone, and so is Yhwach, but it matters little.</em></p><p>
  <em>There will be no replacement to the thing that held the realms apart. Their world will fall. All the worlds will fall.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And it doesn’t matter because they will die first anyway, from the poison in their blood.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His vision fades away as he crumples forwards.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The last thing he remembers is—</em>
</p><p><em>Someone turning him over, shouting, flashes of blue hair, anguished screaming, “Why do you keep going </em>where I can’t follow you?”</p><p>
  <em>In the distance, all around them, little flashes of red break out of the white stone.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And then nothing.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Kisuke blinks, and stands up, <em>Benihime</em> in his hand.</p><p>The world had not been destroyed, exactly, there is not a <em>void</em> left in its place. But it had not lasted long, and what remains now bears little resemblance to anything. Except Hueco Mundo, perhaps, where the sand poured in from.</p><p>His cloak glimmers white and gold now, like Yoruichi’s<em>. </em>Like, once, the captains’ had, except for the golf. When there were still Captains. Still a Gotei. He doesn’t remember <em>everything</em>, he knows, not yet and maybe not ever, but he remembers… enough.</p><p><em>‘Shinji is around here, too. I’ve met him’,</em> he sings, and his voice is strong now, unbroken <em>—</em> and he sounds like Benihime had. Her voice borrowed to sing with, borrowed from the little creatures of pure life that all Zanpakuto had been forged from. ‘<em>Are we… are we all that remains? Is there nothing more left?’</em></p><p>
  <em>‘Others are around. Soi Fon does not remember, yet, and I’ve seen the Kurosaki children wandering around. Others that I do not recognise, or, perhaps, do not remember. I do not think all of us are…. back, yet. Or maybe some have passed on, already, as the world is renewing itself… I can find and meet again those I have met here already with ease, like you. But those that I have not, I can not track. It’s not quite like reiatsu sensing.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Or our journeys are simply different.’</em>
</p><p>Blue hair.</p><p>He remembers why that is important, now. A little.</p><p>Enough.</p><p>
  <em>‘Yoruichi, have you seen Ichigo-san and Kurotsuchi-san? Here?’</em>
</p><p><em>‘No’,</em> she answers, and tilts her head curiously. ‘<em>Have you?’</em></p><p>
  <em>‘Yes. I… would like to help them remember. I know where Ichigo-san passed, I think. The other… I do not.’</em>
</p><p>Yoruichi nods understandingly.</p><p>‘<em>If I learn of the location, I shall tell you.’</em></p><p>‘<em>And I will tell of Soi-fon’s. If you journey with mine — please, please tell them to wait for me somewhere.’</em></p><p>
  <em>‘I will.’</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>He wanders, slowly, through the ruined chamber, the pull of the mountain so much less in the white cloak.</p><p>The throne room of the king forged of the red cloth creatures. The images had not explained that well, he thinks, and wonders how to alter the carvings. The creatures were made into <em>Soul King</em>, the ‘device’ that sustained the old order. The wrong order.</p><p>The walls are cracked here, pieces crumbling to the floor — some of the cracks leading to other rooms, he knows, and some just… cracks.</p><p>He… he has time. All the time, really.</p><p>The journey will take as long as it will take, and the path will be what it will be.</p><p>As long as he is careful to avoid the hungry shadows...</p><p>He wanders through the sunken palace halls, and tries to map them properly in his head, see if he can’t figure out which battles were fought where before it all fell down.</p>
<hr/><p>Benihime sings too, hidden under his robes. They may not be shinigami and Zanpakutou anymore — but there is still power there, they find, when they bring down a metal beast, the sword driven between the head plates and splitting the construction of it apart.</p>
<hr/><p>It is different, scaling the mountain when in white. Easier, faster, his flight energy regenerating whenever he touches the ground, same as elsewhere. If slower.</p><p>And when he walks next to Yoruichi, he’s almost now even cold, the glyphs on their chests glowing bright and steady even in the cold, the frost building up <em>less</em> on his clothes.</p><p>They make it further up the mountain than they ever have before — but the journey still takes its toll before they ever get close enough.</p>
<hr/><p>It takes a handful of journeys to run into Ichigo — at the very end of another one, really, struggling up the icy slopes in the ever-raging snowstorm.</p><p>Kisuke only finds him because of the faint, so very faint sound of unbroken song, and the soft hint of red from Ichigo’s fellow traveler.</p><p>He has never met two at once, and this is an oddity to think about later.</p><p>But for now he is tired, and it is time to sleep.</p><p>Kisuke staggers over to where Ichigo in his own white robe and scarf, and<em>—</em> it is Mayuri that is already sleeping in the snow next to him.</p><p>They all wake shortly, and it is a joyous flight through the mountain, to the end- but with the journey so close, they all feel the need to finish it <em>quickly</em> now.</p><p>Ichigo and Mayuri must have tarried for the urge to be so strong, must have lingered somewhere. Looking for where Mayuri fell?</p><p>‘<em>I’ll find you,’ </em>Kisuke says to Ichigo as they walk into the light together.</p><p>‘<em>I know. I’ll be waiting.’</em></p><p><em>‘If you meet him before I do, again</em> — <em>he fell in the chamber of glass, the one with a thousand cracks where the sand spills far below, in the city below.’</em></p><p><em>‘Oh. Well. We were looking </em>completely<em> in the wrong place, then.’</em></p>
<hr/><p>But it’s Kisuke who meets Mayuri next, because he’s still in <em>red</em> and not white, hiding in a small room as a beast tries to ram its way past the stone wall and eat him.</p><p>Kisuke knows, now, that at most it’s likely to get a good bite out of the scarf, but nothing else.</p><p>He kills it anyway.</p><p>‘<em>Are you unhurt?’ </em>he enquires, and Mayuri shakes his head. ‘<em>We are not far from where you fell. Would you like to remember?’</em></p><p>A nod.</p><p>He has not managed to learn to speak, then, although Kisuke isn’t really surprised. He hasn’t met anyone in red who could, yet, and doesn’t think he will.</p><p>‘<em>Follow me.’</em></p>
<hr/><p>They get separated on the way to the Temple, which recounts their journeys, but Kisuke is confident they will meet again, because he feels a strange sense of <em>completeness</em> now. Something has changed for him in this endless loop of broken reincarnations. And when they meet again...</p><p>And then, who knows?</p><p>Perhaps, they can simply stay away from the mountain.</p><p>Or perhaps, this journey will be the final one.</p>
<hr/><p>He meets Ichigo in the pink desert, freeing the usual trapped cloth animals, reset to their traps as always.</p><p>Kisuke takes his masks off, stows it away, and Ichigo follows suit, and it is strange to feel the wind and sand against skin, almost unpleasant when the wind picks up. But also freeing.</p><p>Mayuri joins them in the gold desert, slipping down the hills to catch up as they try to skid to a halt, until all three of them are together.</p><p>They want to finish <em>this</em> journey together.</p>
<hr/><p>The tall ones in the visions seem… different, maybe shorter, maybe more approving. Something is different.</p><p>Something has changed.</p>
<hr/><p>They walk the mountain to the top, huddled together, singing in a soft harmony to chase away the frost.</p><p>It takes<em>… </em>Kisuke loses count, but it takes days, and they do not sit to rest for fear that they will not rise or wake. It feels important to finish this.</p><p>They can fly again, once they pass the storm, and yet it still takes so long to climb.</p><p>But they have journeys all for a hundred lives, and walking far is not a hardship, not when there’s something new to find.</p><p>The creatures are even more joyous and energetic than usual, but this time none of them take their aid even as they play with them.</p><p>They must <em>finish</em> this properly.</p><p>The light is bright, brighter than usual as they walk through it.</p>
<hr/><p>Kisuke wakes up in the desert, and he feels something almost wilt inside him, that the walk is not over yet, that once again, nothing has changed. He had hoped- they had only just <em>all</em> remembered, only all regained what they had lost, and yet, he had hoped that perhaps they could go <em>on</em>.</p><p>
  <em>‘Huh. This is different.’ </em>
</p><p>Kisuke turns, and blinks.</p><p>Ichigo is next to him, without a mask. And so is Kisuke, he realises, his face exposed, and so is Mayuri on Ichigo’s other side. Ichigo’s robes are white, trimmed in gold and <em>black </em>now. His own — his own are a double layer, white over green with gold trim.</p><p>Different. Evolved?</p><p>And it seems their journeys start together, now.</p><p>And<em>—</em>he does not feel a call to the mountain. He could go. Or he could not go.</p><p>But whatever he chooses, he will never need to travel alone.</p><p>They have all the time in the world together now, to do with as they please.</p><p>That seems like quite a delightful start to <em>something</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comments and kudos are welcome and much appreciated, and help me write!</p><p> </p><p>Here's a link to <a href="https://discordapp.com/invite/ADFnKTZ#_=_">Cywscross' UraIchi Discord Server</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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